At the ‘Global Business Summit on Creative Content‘ in London Ken Parks (Spotify’s Chief Content Officer and Managing Director of Spotify N. America) said Spotify now has over 15 million active users and over 4 million paying subscribers.
January, 2010:------------ 250,000 paid subscribers
March 17, 2010:----------- 320,000
July 20, 2010: ---------------- 500,000
December 8, 2010: ------ 750,000
March 8, 2011:--------------- 1,000,000
July 14, 2011: -----------------1,600,000
Sept 21, 2011: ---------------- 2,000,000
Nov 23, 2011: ------------------2,500,000
Jan 26, 2012: -------------------3,000,000 July 31, 2012:--------------------4,000,000
I absolutely LOVE Spotify, but I don't like the fact that, if I were to pay for the service, I wouldn't "get" anything from it (for example, downloads that I could use). I understand that offline mode eliminates the need for this, but then I can't email songs to people.
Musicians getting 'more than half of royalty income from online streaming'
Many musicians now receive more than half of their royalty income from online services such as Spotify and Deezer, the founder of Adele’s record label has claimed.
Martin Mills, chairman of Beggars Group, said that streaming services have changed the way people listen to music, because the “friction-less” experience makes users much more likely to experiment with sampling new artists or delve into musicians’ back catalogues, and that they had given artists with substantial bodies of work a major financial boost as a result.
“Some of our catalogue artists earn more from streams than downloads of individual tracks [or] any other format,” he said.
My only issue with Spotify are the tags on songs, and not being able to change them!
Spotify completely messes up my Last.fm account when it scrobbles songs!
For instance.. on Spotify it'll say:
Payphone Maroon 5, Wiz Khalifa
Since Maroon 5 is the first name listed before the comma, it'll ONLY scrobble as "Maroon 5 - Payphone" on Last.fm, which messes up my scrobbles since I have the song scrobbled as "Maroon 5 - Payphone (Feat. Wiz Khalifa)".
On-demand services like Spotify and We7 will generate £696m for the global music industry in 2012 - a rise of 40%, new research has suggested.
It means streaming music is the fastest-growing sector of the industry, overtaking downloads, which are due to see an increase of 8.5% this year.
Streaming: 40% increase from last year
Download: 8.5% increase from last year
On-demand is projected to generate £696m or $1.1 billion USD in 2012.
on-demand needs to thank smartphone for its amazing growth.
The good news is that smartphone sales are accounting for more than half of new phone sales. Which mean more and more people are switching from feature phones to smartphones.
IT SURE WILL.. i just discovered this gem.. as an android lover who still uses Itunes as his primary music organizer/player.. its now becoming more hard to stay faithful with itunes.
Brazil would be a sensible market for a South American expansion. Already home to music subscription service Rdio, Brazil was the 8 largest recorded music market in the world in 2011. Services like Spotify see potential: subscriptions accounted for 57% of its puny $7.7 million digital revenue.
Interesting that in Brazil on-demand subscription is 57% while download is 43%
Another market in which subscription has overtaken download. Though digital (on-demand streaming and download) is TINY.
Spotify is third in the USA in term of music subscription service
#1: Rhapsody (over 1 million paying subscribers)
#2: Muve Music (around 700,000-800,000 paying subscribers)
#3: Spotify (around 700,000 paying subscribers
And Muve Music is likely to be #1 in the very near future. From today onward, any Android phone plan with Cricket Wireless (a regional carrier with around 6 million users) will come with Muve Music. Their Android plan will be unlimited talk, text, data and unlimited music downloads.
On Wednesday, prepaid mobile carrier Cricket announced its Muve Music subscription service will be included in all new Android plans -- at no extra cost -- starting September 2. "This is the first time any carrier has put music in all their plans the way voicemail is in all their plans," Jeff Toig, Senior Vice President, Muve Music, tells Billboard.biz. "We think this is a huge step in the story, a huge innovation."
Nevertheless, given the rate of new-customer acquisition, Muve Music can expect to add hundreds of thousands of new subscribers by the end year and should exceed 2 million subscribers by the summer of 2013.
Rhapsody is currently the largest subscription service in the U.S. with over 1 million subscribers (another out-of-date figure). Spotify has 4 million subscribers around the world. Deezer has 1.5 million paying subscribers in numerous countries. Aspiro Music's WiMP has 350,000 subscribers and many more users through its partnerships with ISPs and telecoms in Europe.
The kicker is that Muve Music appears to be planning an international expansion that would grow its subscriber figures even more. Although Cricket Wireless is a U.S.-based wireless carrier, Muve Music can license its service to firms in foreign markets.
I am much more excited about the potential of MUVE MUSIC than Spotify. Go Muve!
It could be the disruptive force that drive subscription music into the stratosphere.
We're just about a week out from the rumored launch of RadioShack's Cricket-based No Contract Wireless plans, and more details are beginning to trickle out about the prepaid service. Specifically, we've just received information concerning how much The Shack intends to charge on a monthly basis, and it's just about what you'd expect: you can choose between featurephone and smartphone options, with the former hooking you up with unlimited messaging and your choice of 300 minutes for $25 or 1,000 minutes for $35. As for the smartphone plans, you'll get unlimited voice, messaging and Muve Music downloads on both selections; the $50 option will get you one gigabyte of 3G data (before throttling ensues), while $60 bestows you with 2.5GB data and mobile hotspot use, Visual Voicemail access, unlimited international text and all-you-can-eat directory assistance.
So any Android phone that Radioshack sell for the Radioshack carrier, it will have Muve Music with it.
So you can see why I am more excited about the potential of Muve Music than Spotify. And one more reason why Muve Music will overtake Rhapsody and Spotify to be #1 in the USA.
Though if the like of T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon follow suit, they would overtake Muve in a very short time.
USA top wireless phone carriers:
AT&T Mobility (108.3 million)
Verizon Wireless (94.2 million)
Sprint Nextel (55 million)
T-Mobile USA (34 million)
TracFone Wireless (19 million)
MetroPCS (9 million)
U.S. Cellular (6 million) Cricket Wireless (6 million) ------THE CARRIER OF MUVE MUSIC
Another potential market for online music is as a bundled product. Kusek sees a future where Verizon or AT&T bundle a premium music service with mobile devices so it's a simple add-on like texting or larger data package. This would allow the ISPs and phone service providers to get content on their networks. This is something Muve Music has embarked on with Cricket Wireless. Cricket is a lesser-known no contract carrier that offers Muve as a $10 add-on for unlimited music downloads, and it will be including the service at no extra cost with a few Android phones in the near future.
Will Pandora or Spotify head in this direction? If the Cricket Wireless bundling example is any indication, more aggressive mobile device expansion may very well may be the next big move.
